The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  “Isn’t is almost too good to be true?” Kay had exulted; she could see Harald’s name on the program with a credit as assistant director. But in the second week of rehearsals came the rift in the lute. The producer did not make clear the different spheres of authority; the way Harald analyzed it, it was because of an inner conflict: he was undecided himself as to just what kind of show he wanted, a literature revue with some bright songs and really topical sketches or the usual stupid omnium-gatherum held together by a couple of stars. So he was using Harald as a sort of guinea pig. Harald would rehearse a scene, and as soon as he had it set, the director would come and change it—introduce a line of show girls into an unemployment march or gag up a sketch about the milk strike with some farmerettes in straw hats. The authors were a hundred per cent on Harald’s side, but the producer, when appealed to, would just vacillate, saying “Try it this way for a while” or “Wait!” Meanwhile, all through rehearsals, the director had been riding Harald every chance he got—if Harald was a few minutes late after the dinner break or missed a music cue—because Harald was loyal to the authors’ conception, till finally, this afternoon, Harald, very quietly, in front of the whole company, had told him that he was incompetent to direct a book with a mind behind it. Kay would have given anything to have seen that. The director, unable, naturally, to match wits with Harald, had started screaming at him to get out of the theatre. So, before the show had even opened, there he was, out on the street. When he went upstairs to the office to protest (Kay could have told him that it was a mistake to delude himself that he still had the producer’s ear), the producer, too ashamed to see him, sent word that at this stage he could not go over the director’s head; the treasurer paid him two weeks’ salary and offered him a drink, and that was that.

  What Kay smelled was the prescription Scotch the treasurer had given him, to buck him up; for one awful moment, when she first opened the door for him and saw him standing there with the bottle of gin and alcohol on his breath, she was afraid that he might have been fired for drinking on the job. Once she had heard the story, she could see how unfair that was. Not only the treasurer, but the whole company had showed their sympathy for Harald. Most of the principals had made a point of stopping him, as he was leaving, to say they were sorry. The authors (one of them wrote regularly for Vanity Fair) had rushed up from their seats to argue with the director; one of the show girls had cried. …

  Kay sat, nodding, in the cute red apron with white appliques her mother had sent her, while Harald paced the living room, re-creating the scene in the theatre. Every now and then, she interrupted to ask a searching question, which she tried to make sound casual. Before she wrote her parents, she wanted to be sure that he was telling her the whole truth and not just his own partial view of it. That was the big thing they taught you at Vassar: keep your mind open and always ask for the evidence, even from your own side.

  Though she believed Harald’s version, because all the evidence she had supported it, she could see that an outside person, like her Dads, might think that Harald might have been wiser to tend to his knitting—see to the cues and the props and the prompt book and not give the director any excuse for picking on him. Like being late. But who was to blame for that? The producer or whoever was responsible for the awful hours they rehearsed. “Take an hour for dinner”! How did they expect Harald to get home, with those slow crosstown buses, eat, and go back again, all in sixty minutes? Most of the company, according to Harald, caught a bite in a drugstore or a speak-easy, next door to the theatre. But Harald was newly married, though nobody seemed to care or take that into consideration. Yet they knew he was married, because he had let her come once to a rehearsal and the star had caught sight of her in the house and made a rumpus, stopping right in the middle of a song and pointing to Kay and demanding to know what she was doing there; when she found it was Harald’s bride, she said, “I’m so sorry, darling,” and asked them both to her apartment for a drink. But the director had told Harald never to bring her again; it upset the principals, he said, to have strangers watching them rehearse, as Harald ought to know. It was the first time she had seen Harald eat humble pie, and it had given her the most dismal feeling, as if she were a sort of encumbrance; when they went to the star’s apartment (a penthouse on Central Park South), she was conscious of her heavy legs and the hairs scattered on them and it was no consolation to remember that she had directed a Hall Play and been on the Daisy Chain at Vassar.

  She thought that Actors Equity ought to do something about rehearsal hours, which Priss Hartshorn agreed were absolutely medieval and would not be tolerated in a substandard factory. She and Harald had hardly had intercourse since he got this job—how could they? The company did not break at night till one or two in the morning, and by that time she was asleep; when she left for work the next morning, Harald was still snoozing. One night, he did not get home till four, after a conference in the producer’s office, yet he had to be back for rehearsal the next day at ten, even though it was a Sunday and the two of them might have had a leisurely breakfast together for once. And after rehearsals the show was going out of town to open, so that she would be alone for two weeks while Harald kept company with the dancers and the show girls—one of them was quite intelligent (Harald had found her backstage reading Katherine Mansfield) and had a house in Connecticut. So, naturally, Kay was glad when Harald tooled home (that was one of his favorite expressions) for dinner, instead of eating with the others in that speak-easy. Once he had brought one of the authors, and Kay had made salmon loaf with cream pickle sauce. That would have to be the night they broke for dinner early, and there was quite a wait (“Bake 1 hour,” the recipe went, and Kay usually added fifteen minutes to what the cookbook said), which they had to gloss over with cocktails. Harald did not realize what a rush it was for her, every day now, coming home from work at Mr. Macy’s and having to stop at Gristede’s for the groceries; Harald never had time any more to do the marketing in the morning. And, strange to say, ever since she had started doing it, it had been a bone of contention between them. He liked the A & P because it was cheaper, and she liked Gristede’s because they delivered and had fancy vegetables—the Sutton Place trade, Harald called it. Then Harald liked to cook the same old stand-bys (like his spaghetti with dried mushrooms and tomato paste), and she liked to read the cookbook and the food columns and always be trying something new. He said she had no imagination, following recipes with her glasses on and measuring the seasonings and timing everything: cooking was a lively art and she made it academic and lifeless. It was funny, the little differences that had developed between them, in the course of three months; at first, she had just been Harald’s echo. But now if he said why not be sensible and open a can (this was another night when dinner was not ready), she would scream that she could not do that, it might be all right for him, but she could not live that way, week in, week out, eating like an animal, just to keep alive. Afterward, when he had left, she was sorry and made a resolution to be a better planner and budget her preparation time, the way the food columns said. But when she did manage to have dinner waiting in the oven, having fixed a casserole the night before, he would get irritated if she tried to hurry him to the table by reminding him what time it was. “Less wifely concern, please,” he would say, waving his forefinger at her in the owly way he had, and deliberately shake up another cocktail before he would consent to eat.

  This made her feel a bit guilty; he had never had the cocktail habit until he knew her. “Your class rite,” he called it, and she was not sure whether he meant Class of ’33 or social class; back in Salt Lake City, her parents never dreamed of having liquor even when they entertained, despite the fact that Dads could get prescription whisky. But in the East, it was the social thing to do, for older people too, as she knew from staying with Pokey Prothero and Priss and Polly. In Cleveland, as Harald had seen himself, Helena Davison’s family had sherry. So, to please her, they had started having cocktails every night in the alumin
um cocktail shaker. The difference between them was that what she liked was the little formality and what Harald liked was the liquor. One or two cocktails, of course, could never hurt anybody; still, during rehearsals, they should probably have done without, for Harald’s sake. Yet it would have seemed such a comedown to just put the food on and sit down and eat, like her parents.

  Harald had gone to the kitchen and fixed himself a gin and bitters; this was a bad sign—he knew Kay hated the taste of straight liquor and did not like to see him drink it. Now he put tobacco in his pipe, lit it, and poured a second. “What can I fix you?” he said. “A silver fizz?” Kay frowned; she was wounded by the mocking courtesy of his manner. “I don’t think I’ll have anything,” she replied thoughtfully. Harald’s dark, wiry eyebrows shot up. “Why this departure?” he said. Kay had suddenly determined to turn over a new leaf, but she felt this was not quite the right moment to announce it; you never knew how Harald would take things when he had been drinking. “I just don’t feel like it,” she said. “I’m going to start dinner.” She rose from her chair. Harald stared at her, with his hands on his hips and pursed lips. “My God!” he said. “You are the most tactless, blundering fool that ever lived.” “But what have I said?” cried Kay, too astonished, even, to be hurt. “‘I don’t think I’ll have anything,’” he quoted, imitating her voice and adding a smug note that she could swear had not been there when she spoke. If he only knew, she was dying for a silver fizz and was doing without because she blamed herself, more than a little, for the trouble during rehearsals. What would happen if she went to work at Macy’s after having two cocktails before breakfast? It was the same thing, no? You could learn a lot, she always found, if you transferred your behavior to a different context and looked at it there, objectively. Had she just been fired, for instance, she would want to sit right down and trace the contributory causes, no matter how small. But maybe Harald was doing that and not letting on? “‘I just don’t feel like it,’” he went on. “Don’t take that tone. It doesn’t suit you. You’re a terrible actress, you know.” “Oh, can it!” Kay said abruptly and walked out to the kitchen. Then she listened to hear if Harald would go out, slamming the door, as he had the other night when she brought home from the store the Continental String Bean Slicer that did not work. But he was still there.

  She opened a can of beans and dumped them into a baking dish; on top she put strips of bacon. On the way home on the El she had decided to make Welsh rabbit with beer, to surprise Harald, but now she was afraid to, in case it should curdle and give Harald a chance to lecture her. She pulled apart a head of lettuce and started her salad dressing. All at once, thinking of the Welsh rabbit that they were not going to have tonight just because Harald had lost his job, she gave a loud sob. Everything now was going to be changed, she knew it. By this, she really meant the Apartment; she was living for the moment they could move. Their present place belonged to the widow of an etcher who was now in Cornish, New Hampshire, and it was full of antiques and reproductions—Spanish chests and Oriental rugs and piecrust tables and Hepplewhite-style chairs and brass and copper that had to be polished. Kay could hardly wait to get out of this museum and move in with their own things. Harald knew this, yet so far he had not said a word about the Apartment, which he must have guessed was the thing uppermost in her mind from the moment she opened the door and saw him: what were they going to do? Hadn’t this thought occurred to him too?

  In her pocketbook on the lowboy in the living room were samples of upholstery material she had brought home to show him; she had spent her whole lunch hour in Macy’s Forward House choosing a modern couch and two side chairs in muslin. And she had priced draperies just for fun, to show Harald how much they were saving thanks to the fact that the management gave you Venetian blinds free, the way they did in most of the smart new buildings. With the Venetian blinds you would not need draperies. To have had them made, she had found out today, even at Mr. Macy’s with the discount, would have run to $100 or $120, so you could treat that amount as a reduction of the first year’s rent. And that was unlined; lined would be even more.

  She glanced at her beans in the oven—not yet brown. In the living room, she opened the drop-leaf table and set two places, meanwhile stealing a look at Harald, who was reading the New Yorker. He raised his eyes. “How would you like,” he said, “to ask the Blakes in for bridge after dinner?” His negligent tone did not fool her; this, from Harald, was an apology. He was trying to make it up to her for nearly ruining their evening. “I’d love it!” Kay was delighted; it was a long time since they had had a foursome of bridge. “Shall I call them or will you?” “I will,” he said, and, pulling Kay down to him, he kissed her hard. She released herself and hurried to the kitchen. “I’ve got three bottles of beer in the icebox!” she called out. “Tell them that!”

  But in the kitchen her face fell. It struck her, all at once, that there was method in Harald’s madness. Why the Blakes, of all people? Norine Blake, her classmate, was very left wing; at college she was always leading Socialist rallies and demonstrations, and her husband, Putnam, was a registered Socialist. And both of them had a complex about economy and living within a budget, though Putnam had a private income and came from a very good family. Kay could foresee what was coming. The Blakes, when they heard about Harald losing his job, would immediately start worrying the subject of the Apartment. Kay was already sick of hearing that Norine and Put had found a nice basement with a real garden for only $40 a month—why couldn’t she and Harald? She wouldn’t live in a basement; it was unhealthy. She glanced at her beans again and slammed the oven door. Put would argue (she could hear him!) that Harald was perfectly justified in going back on his legal obligation, which was what a lease was, because a lease was a form of exploitation and rent was unearned increment—something like that. And Norine would talk about carfares. She was hipped on the subject. The last time the four of them had played bridge, she had cross-questioned Kay about how she got to work. “You take the crosstown bus?” she asked, looking at her husband as if the crosstown bus were the most unheard-of luxury. “And the Sixth Avenue El?” Then she looked at her husband again, nodding. “That makes two fares,” she relentlessly concluded. Norine’s idée fixe was that all young couples should live near a subway stop. And she thought that Harald, because he worked in the Times Square area, should live on the West Side, not more than two blocks from an express stop. Kay and Harald had laughed at Norine’s transportation obsession, but just the same it had put a bee in Harald’s bonnet. And that very night, when Kay had served coffee and toasted cheese sandwiches after bridge, Norine had cried out, “What, real cream?” Apparently anybody but a millionaire was expected to live on evaporated. All these months Kay had been telling Harald that everybody bought cream as a matter of course (he wanted to use the top of the bottle), and she had turned red as a beet with confusion, as though Norine had exposed her in a lie. Yet Harald, strange to relate, instead of taking this amiss, had only teased Kay about it. “What, real cream!” he had murmured, afterward, squeezing her breasts.

  Harald was always saying that she was transparent. Sometimes, like tonight, he meant it as a criticism, but sometimes he seemed to love her for being easy to see through, though what he saw or thought he saw she could not exactly make out. This reminded her of the funny letter she had found, night before last, when she was straightening up his papers to get ready for their move. It was a letter from Harald to his father and must have been written, she had figured out, the Saturday before she and Harald were married. She could not resist reading it when she saw her own name in the middle of the first page.

  “Kay is not afraid of life, Anders”—that was what he called his father. “You and Mother and I are, all of us, a little. We know that life can hurt us. Kay has never found that out. That, I think, is why I’ve decided finally to marry her, though the cynics advise me to wait for a rich girl, who could buy me a piece of a show. Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. Between ours
elves—this isn’t for Mother’s eyes—I’ve known a few such, in the Biblical sense. I’ve made love to them in their roadsters and raided their fathers’ liquor cabinets and let them pay for me at the speak-easies where they have charge accounts. So I speak from experience. They’re afraid of life too, have the death urge of their class in them; they want to annihilate experience in a wild moment of pleasure. They’re like the Maenads who destroyed Orpheus—do you remember the old Greek myth? In the last analysis, they’re afraid of the future, just like the Petersen family. You and Mother worry about your losing your job again or reaching retirement age; ever since the crash, the gilded girls worry that Papa might lose his money or have a revolution take it away from him. Kay is different; she comes from the secure class you never quite made, the upper professional class. Her father is a big orthopedist in Salt Lake City; look him up in Who’s Who (if you haven’t done so already!). That class still believes in its future and in its ability to survive and govern, and quite rightly too, as we see from the Soviet Union, where the services of doctors and scientists, no matter what their ‘bourgeois’ background, are at a premium, like the services of film directors and literary men. I see that belief, that pioneer confidence, in Kay, though she’s unconscious of it herself; it’s written all over her, the ‘outward and visible sign of an inner and spiritual grace,’ as the Episcopal prayer book says. Not that she is graceful, except in outdoor sports, riding and swimming and hockey too, she tells me. Speaking of the prayer book (read it some time for its style), Kay wants us to be married in J. P. Morgan’s church; I’m agreeing, in a spirit of irony, and consoling myself with the thought that Senator Cutting (Bronson Cutting of New Mexico, one of my minor heroes—have I mentioned this?—a fighting gentleman progressive) worships there too when he’s in town. (His sister has something to do with the Social Register.)